


Catch My Fall

by gonergone



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: First Meetings, First Time, M/M, spies being spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 10:48:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4057147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/pseuds/gonergone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill Haydon was the sort of man who got everything he wanted – Jim knew that the first time he laid eyes on him.  Jim just never imagined he'd be one of the things Bill wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch My Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoldgods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/gifts).



> It's not like Bill would have told the whole truth about meeting Jim in his Circus file, after all.

Bill Haydon was the sort of man who got everything he wanted – Jim knew that the first time he laid eyes on him. Bill was sitting in a pub with a girl, smiling and leaning close, while Jim and his mates gathered at the other end of the long bar, all of them muddy and bruised from rugby, laughing loudly over pints and attracting scornful looks from nearly everyone else in the place. They were too loud to ignore for long for almost anyone. Almost. Haydon and his girl were so wrapped up in each other that Jim suspected the walls could've caved in without them noticing, and not once did they look up to see what all the ruckus was. It was enough to make him more than a bit jealous – he'd never been with anyone who he'd been so single-minded about, and certainly no one had ever been that way about _him_. He watched them from the corner of his eye for an hour, two, until abruptly they got up to leave, Haydon's hand on the small of her back, drifting steadily down to her arse.

He poked his mate in the side and nodded toward the couple. "Who's that, then?"

Jasper squinted down the bar and smirked. "You haven't heard about Bonny Bill Haydon? Always got a girl on his arm. Don't know how he does it, the prat. What is it about bloody artists?" 

Jim watched Bill dip his head to whisper in the girl's ear and let his eyes drift down the curve of that long body. He had an idea or two, not that Jasper would understand that sort of thing. The problem was, Jim wasn't entirely sure who he was envious of. Jim had never been that sort of person, the Bill Haydon sort of person, but Oxford seemed to be teeming with them, all of them young and clever and bound for glory. That was true even with the war looming over then all a thick black cloud, inevitable.

*

After that, it seemed like Haydon was everywhere: passing in the corridors, Haydon always surrounded by a group of admirers; having lunch in a café two tables away, his back to Jim; as a last-minute addition to a cricket team that Jim's friends had tossed together, the white of his sweater always in the corner of Jim's eye. 

Jim desperately wanted to hate him.

Christ Church wasn’t as easy for him as it was for others; he had to work for it more. Real cleverness, he was convinced, was always going to be just beyond his reach. He didn’t mind that. In fact, he spent a not-insignificant amount of time at parties playing it all up, thickening his accent and scowling, separating himself from the fine, privileged lads the college swarmed with. Most of the time it did the trick, convincing one of the girls attending that he was a diamond in the rough, someone who needed saving. None of his mates could understand how Jim Prideaux, of all people, managed to pull more often than the rest of them put together, and he was never tempted to enlighten them. 

It was, he suspected, all he had going for him, and the sort of thing that would make him hate a pillock like Bill Haydon on sight. 

*

The one place he never thought Haydon would show up was at a Populars lecture. Jim belonged to more than his share of college clubs and activities, always hoping to feel as if he actually belonged somewhere, striving for the effortless ease his classmates had with each other and the world. The ease blokes like Haydon had, undoubtedly. Jim had gone with Susan, and spent most of the lecture with an arm thrown over her shoulders, listening to the chatter around him, half bored out of his mind. They were her friends, not his, and he missed the boisterous noise that his mates would have made. 

Even from a distance, Bill's charisma was impossible to ignore, the grace of his hands as he gestured, the easy lope of his body. Jim retreated to the back of the room, sitting alone and hoping no one would notice him. That was where Haydon found him. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes wide and his usual half-smirk replaced with a far more somber expression. 

"Hullo," Jim said, wishing he could come up with something biting and clever. He had never been good at thinking on his feet, and if he had thought for a moment that bloody Haydon would choose that of all days to deign to speak with him he would have written something down. That was always the problem with bloody Haydons: they zigged when you expected them to zag.

"What is your dilemma?" Haydon asked.

Jim blinked at him, trying to figure out the joke. It had to be at his expense, he assumed, Haydon setting him up, a hilarious story to tell his mates later. "I haven't got one," he finally managed, waiting for the punchline. 

"Then what are you doing here?" Haydon asked. "If you haven't a dilemma, how did you get in?"

Jim opened his mouth and closed it, completely at sea. It seemed like a straightforward question, but Jim was always expecting things to be straightforward when in fact they were twisted and full of hidden crevasses, designed to crush the unwary. 

Bloody Haydon seemed to take pity on him then, clapping his shoulder and leading him toward the crowd. "I'd like an answer to that, eventually," he told Jim, "but I'll give you some time to sort a proper one out. For now we might as well go say hello to this lecturer – Khlebnikov, is it? – and see what _his_ dilemma is. God knows the Russians are full of them. We'll be lucky to get out of here before dawn."

*

The thing was, watching bloody Haydon with Khlebnikov was something of a revelation. Jim had expected him to be clever, and he was; Jim had expected him to be charming, and he was; Jim had even expected him to match wits with the Russian, which he did, obviously taking great pleasure in every sensible response that Khlebnikov gave. 

Finally he led Jim into the kitchen to see if they could find anything a bit stronger than coffee.

It was quiet and empty in there, the noise of the gathering muffled and far away. Jim stood against the counter, his hands braced against it, watching Haydon rummage about in a half-hearted search. 

"Shouldn't have even bothered," Haydon muttered, slamming a cupboard door. "That's the problem with communists. All this talk about equality and alienation; they never appreciate the truly necessary things in life."

Jim snorted and turned to go. "I should get back to my date."

Haydon raised an eyebrow at him, stepping closer. "Should you?"  
It was one thing to see all of Haydon's charm and seduction directed at other people, and quite another thing to have it directed at him. Jim froze, licking his lips as Haydon pressed into his space his eyes never leaving Jim's face.

"I've seen you," he said, waving a hand vaguely. "You're James, aren't you?"

"Jim," he corrected automatically, slightly shocked that someone like Haydon knew who he was.

"Well, Jim, I'm Bill." He smirked again, and Jim was beginning to wonder if that was his default expression. "You want to get out of here?"

Jim didn't even have to think about it. "Yes."

*

Bill's room was a cluttered mess, canvases stacked against two walls, paint smears on the wooden floor – the parts of the floor that he could see, that weren't covered with discarded clothes and empty tubes of oil paint. The bed, the only real furniture besides a small desk, was piled with twisted, dirty sheets. Jim took it in quickly, in the second he stood in the doorway before Bill shut and locked the door behind them.

As soon as Jim shut the door, Bill was pressing him against it, his hands strong and sure on his shoulders, running down his arms to touch the bare skin of his forearms, drifting along the taut muscle that Rugby and cricket had put there. Bill himself was all tall leanness and coiled energy when Jim ran his hands along his back. 

Jim didn't have much time to explore, however, before Bill was sliding to his knees, impatient fingers jerking at the buttons of his trousers. Jim was already mostly hard, had been hard since the party, and the rough way Bill was handling him, grabbing at him, only made him harder. Jim blinked down at him and Bill met his gaze for a moment.

"Well, I didn't bring you back here to chat," he told him roughly, shoving the fabric out of the way.

Bill wrapped his lips around Jim's cock like an expert, and Jim expected he probably _was_ one, at least by Jim's standards. His mouth was hot and he sucked hard at the tip of Jim's cock, then engulfed most of his cock in one fluid motion, his tongue flattening along the shaft, pressing hard enough – _good_ enough – to make Jim bang his head back against the door. His hands tangled in Bill's hair, and for the first time he saw the upside to the length, digging his fingers tightly in and thrusting into that mouth. 

Bill's hand pushed Jim's trousers down further, reaching in to squeeze lightly at his bollocks, rolling and caressing before rubbing the sensitive skin behind it. 

Jim cursed gustily, spreading his legs to give Bill more room to maneuver. Bill was alternating between sucking hard at the head of his cock and deep throating him, and Jim was already embarrassingly close to coming. That was the worst part, knowing that Bill bloody Haydon, of all people, could barely touch him and still have him shooting within a few minutes. He concentrated hard on the worst images he could come up with, and got as far as his mother naked before Bill wrapped his left hand around the base of his shaft and pumped him fast and hard, his mouth still around the head, hot and wet and utterly perfect. _Fuck_ he was good. 

Jim moaned, his body jerking beyond his control and fucking Bill's mouth. Part of him wanted to choke him, to watch Bill gag unattractively, but most of him just wanted Bill to keep doing exactly what he was, to suck him down while Jim drove into him, fingers yanking hard on Bill's hair, harder and faster. 

When he came, he bit his lip hard enough to taste blood, his body spasming uncontrollably. He felt Bill untangle himself, Bill's hands sliding out of his hair. Jim leaned against the door, panting for long moments, watching Bill spit into the tiny trash bin.

Jim hadn't quite realized how much he'd needed that. His whole body felt electrified.

Bill's hands were on him, then, again, pushing him across the small space between the door and the bed until Jim's knees buckled and he fell onto the mattress gratefully. 

"I hope you don't think you're going to sleep," Bill told him, amused, standing beside the bed and beginning to shuck his clothes. Actually, that sounded rather good to Jim, though he settled for lying on his side, watching Bill's body reveal itself to him.

Jim had always been attracted to men who had athletic builds similar to his own, but Bill's leanness was unquestionably one of the hottest things he had ever seen. He licked his lips, ignoring Bill's smirk.

Bill leaned across the bed and smacked Jim's still trouser-clad knee. "This isn't a bloody peep show, you know. Get your kit off."

Jim obediently began pulling at his shirt with clumsy fingers, his eyes drinking in Bill's body – slender and wiry, pale skin, thick cock jutting from its nest of dark hair. His fingers stilled until Bill, exasperated, took over, yanking it roughly over his head and sending one button skittering across the wood floor. His hands were cool on Jim's heated flesh, stroking along his chest as he undid the rest of the buttons. Jim hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers where they still rode on his thighs and pushed them the rest of the way down. They got caught on his shoes, and for a long moment he flailed, trying to kick them off.

Bill chuckled, pressing a hand to his stomach to still him. "You really are the most hopeless person," he laughed, pulling everything off easily. His eyes traced down Jim's body slowly, paying more attention than any of Jim’s other lovers had bothered to. Jim wondered, vaguely, whether he'd end up as a sketch or painting in the near future. The idea excited him more than a bit, not that he had any intention of letting Bill know what he was thinking.

Bill's hands were on his hips, turning him over. Jim crawled onto his hands and knees, feeling the bed dip as Bill moved into place behind him. Bill's hands skimmed over his back, pressing against the base of his spine. He squeezed his arse, and Jim automatically spread his legs as far as he could, shifting his weight forward. 

Bill squeezed his arse again, pulling the cheeks apart and sliding his fingers in between them to ghost over the tender skin and tight hole. "What is it about men's arses?" he mused. "They're always so inviting. Far more inviting than women's. I don't know why there hasn't been more poetry written about them."

"Even I know that there has been," Jim grunted. "Just not recently."

"We've all studied the Classics," Bill agreed, "but there should be rather a lot more." 

"Done an extensive study of it all, have you?" Jim asked, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

"As a matter of fact, I have." There was a sharp feeling of teeth on his arse, a teasing quick bite before Bill's hands pressed harder, spreading his cheeks further. There was the spreading warmth of his tongue, lapping gently at first before pressing harder against Jim's hole. It only took a moment for Jim to be rocking back into it, moaning. He hated that Bill had already discovered one of his weaknesses.

He was beginning to hump the mattress when he felt Bill withdraw, and he couldn't help the low cry of anguish when the tongue was replaced by nimble fingers smearing something cool and fluid inside him.

"I've never been much of a poet myself, but I feel like your arse, in particular, is inspiring a few odes. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"I can't say that they have," Jim muttered. He was fully hard again, and could feel himself leaking against his own stomach. 

"Need to fix that," Bill told him, his voice a low growl as his fingers withdrew, replaced by the head of his cock.

Jim gulped in air as Bill entered him, the familiar discomfort-bordering-on-pain making him claw at the dirty sheets.

Bill thrust shallowly until Jim began to push back. Then his hands tightened on Jim's hips and he began thrusting hard and fast, his panting breath loud in the little room. He adjusted his angle slightly with each thrust, until Jim bucked under him. With a hiss, the thrusts became longer and harder, pressing Jim hard into the mattress. That was all it took for Jim to come, spilling across his stomach and the sheets.

Bill made the smallest of sounds when he came, a quiet whine in the back of his throat. He sprawled on top of Jim languidly, annoyingly heavy until Jim shifted under him, pushing him off. He rolled to lay next to Jim, his eyes dark and unfocused. 

"Do you want a cigarette?"

Jim rolled over, too, until he could blink at the ceiling. "I don't smoke much." 

"Bloody athletes," Bill grunted, reaching over the edge of the bed to rummage in the detritus there. "I'll never understand you lot, running after little balls on fields. All that game playing."

"You should try it some time," Jim told him. "You might like it more than you think." He used the sheet to clean himself off as best he could.

Bill snorted, an unlit fag jutting from the side of his mouth. "I should hope not. I might die of shock."

Jim rolled his eyes, and forced himself up, feeling around for his clothes. 

Bill watched him with lidded eyes. "You don't have to go, you know."

Jim sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "I do, actually. I'd better find Susan and apologize. She's not particularly likely to forgive me, but I owe her that much."

"More game playing," Bill told him. "If she's going to hate you anyway, why bother? We both know you're not actually sorry."

Jim jerked on his shoe laces a little harder than he needed. "It's the right thing to do. I'd like to think I'm the sort of person who does that, when he can."

Bill laughed. "Fuck the right thing. Do what you want to do."

Jim glared at him. "I just have, haven't I? Done exactly what I wanted to do."

"Could do it again," Bill said with a smirk.

Jim just grunted, pulling on his jacket. "I'm sure I'll see you again."

He was halfway out the door before he heard Bill's amused response. "I'm sure you will."

*

The war was different for them. Jim had no doubt that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of young men who were excited about the fighting, jumping headfirst into the action as quickly and enthusiastically as they could, but that was nothing at all compared to the sheer relish and thrill with which members of the Circus saw the conflict. _Conflicts_ , more precisely, since each region had its own head and each head had enough autonomy to run their agents how they wanted, within general Circus parameters. 

At the beginning of the war Jim had been knocking about in ugly places, putting his Czech skills to use as what would come to be called a scalp hunter but during the war were simply called operators. Most of the work was centered on decrypting and exploiting German and Italian signals – intelligence traffic. The Circus had never had counter-espionage or deception operations before the war, and sorting out how to use them properly was taking longer than anyone had anticipated. It took a lot of trial and error, mostly because, as Bill told Jim practically every time they met, no one in London could keep their heads out of their arses for more than five minutes at a time.

"It's a bloody mess," Bill ranted more than once, angry and frustrated at what he considered entrenched ineptitude from the useless wankers at the top. "When _I'm_ in charge –" and the tirade would continue for hours, sometimes, with Jim nodding wearily the whole time, too tired to do much else. Half the time his network was falling to shit, too many demands on them all, too many locals whispering in the dark. He assumed Bill was having similar troubles, though even they never spoke in specifics. That wasn't allowed. 

The thing was, it wasn't totally mad, what Bill was saying. During the war the agency was expanding beyond all expectation, and people were rising quickly, talented young men overwhelming the old guard. Bill was more talented than most, too. Jim didn't doubt that he probably _would_ be in charge, that he would be the brains, and Jim the muscle, and they'd accomplish whatever they set out to do. 

The war made all of them optimistic.

*

Jim sat in the misting rain, miserably pretending to read a newspaper as he watched people come and go in the square. He had never managed to pick up the habit of smoking, even though he never had time for rugby anymore, but he'd always loved having a cigarette as a prop when he was working; something to do with his hands and a reason for loitering. The _best_ reason for loitering, in his opinion. Sadly, even for people like him, cigarettes had become incredibly difficult to find in the field. Coffee was almost as hard. Good coffee was impossible. The cup of swill he'd bought had long since gone cold, though he still sipped at it absently every once in a while. He knew, without looking up, that there were fourteen people in the square, most of them locals doing their shopping. 

Sighing, he flipped a page in the newspaper, the paper wet and clinging unpleasantly to his fingers. There was movement out of the corner of his eye and he glanced up surreptitiously, unable to hide a small smile. Even turned away from him and bent low over a market stall, Jim would've known Bill's familiar shape anywhere, in any circumstances.

Bill glanced up and their eyes met across the square, just for a moment, before Bill cocked his head and turned back to the shop keep he'd been chatting with. It was enough: message sent and received.

Jim raised a hand to wipe the rain from his face and Bill was gone, already striding across the ancient cobblestones in a way that was so _Bill_ Jim wanted to roll his eyes. Some were meant for the field, they had been told in their early days in the Circus, and some were not, and as much as it pained him, Bill was definitely in the latter category. It wasn't even that he didn't understand subterfuge; Jim suspected that he just considered the whole messy business of it all somewhat beneath him. 

Jim waited another ten minutes, the rain falling steady and cold, before he choked down the last of the faux coffee, folded the sodden newspaper and walked slowly south, doubling back through the older part of town before circling to the north. Within twenty minutes he was shutting the safe house door behind him, shaking off water like a dog.

*

They were never supposed to meet in the field. Operators only met with the people they ran in their own networks, and they were never supposed to see anyone else; it risked too much. _It wasn't done_. Not in the war. There were protocols, rules, countless directives flowing from the head and the numerous regional heads under that one – all borne of necessity, borne of death and destruction, in theory, but really borne of greed and the desire to service the Empire and expand its dirty fingers into even more pies. 

Bill picked and chose what rules he'd deign to follow, in a way that stirred up all of Jim's initial animosity toward him. He'd assumed that Bill was a pillock when he first met him, and the truth was that Bill was actually far, far worse than he would ever have expected. Bill was a charming, egotistical wanker beyond all measure, and Jim both hated and loved him for it.

*

Bill was already sitting on the filthy sofa, his shoes kicked off and his tie loosened, still-boyish features arranged in concentration over something Jim was sure he'd never understand. It was exactly the way that Jim had found him a hundred times, a thousand, while they were at Oxford, still young men with the world at their feet. All that was missing was a cigarette burning between the second knuckles of his right hand and a school scarf thrown carelessly over his shoulders.

When Jim draped his wet jacket over the back of a chair Bill blinked and seemed to come back from wherever his thoughts had taken him. "I'm glad I missed the worst of the rain."

Jim frowned at him, his hands still wet and clumsy as he began to pull off his shoes. "How do you always manage that, exactly? It's inhuman." 

Bill's careless shrug was more than enough answer.

"The world wouldn't dare rain on someone as important as you, I suppose," Jim supplied. " _Or_ , and this is just a guess, but I imagine you came here straight from the square, without bothering to try to hide your trail at all."

Bill huffed, immediately irritated. "We both know perfectly well that we're the only operators within twenty miles right now. I'm not going to jump through ridiculous hoops just to check off the boxes on a list."

Jim sighed inwardly. This was an argument they'd had too many times before. "That is the job, you know. If you don't like rules, you may be in the wrong business. It's _all_ rules."

Bill snorted. "You know, sometimes I think I am. I thought we'd be surrounded by clever chaps, but real intelligence is impossible to find in this line of work."

Jim ran a hand through his hair, trying to fix the wet strands. "You should put that in your report."

"I think I will. Right above my resignation." That was the joke. The work was dull and hard and they were blown more often than they had any successes, so it was frustrating as well, so they hated it. Even so, the bright plum jobs of the higher echelons plainly called out to Bill on a regular basis. No one believed he'd have to be out in the field running networks from more than a few years. 

Jim began unbuttoning the white shirt that was clinging to his chest damply. He looked up to see Bill eyeing his fingers closely. Jim's fingers stilled, and Bill's eyes flicked to his face.

"Come here."

Jim did, only pausing to kick off his shoes, not caring, in that moment, where they landed on the dirty floor. 

Jim pressed one knee along each of Bill's sides, straddling him and leaning forward to Bill's hungry mouth. Bill's hands immediately settled familiarly on his arse, squeezing in a way that was unmistakably possessive, and that never failed to make Jim instantly hard. He leaned forward and kissed Bill firmly, hands grasping the sides of Bill's face, stroking along his cheekbones. Bill's tongue pressed into his mouth, invading and conquering, as always. He always knew exactly what to do to drive Jim crazy. Jim reached down with one hand and carefully undid the buttons on his own trousers, releasing his cock with a rush of relief. He stroked along the front of Bill's trousers at the hard bulge there, pressing hard with his thumb until Bill moaned into his mouth. Bill's mouth shifted to lick at the corner of his mouth.

"Are you just going to tease me? Is this because of what happened in Paris?"

Paris had been a curvy blonde. Paris had also been four months ago, far longer than Jim had ever been able to hold a grudge against Bill, and they both knew it.

"This is for making me wait in the rain for over an hour," Jim told him, wrapping his hand around Bill's trouser-clad cock and squeezing.

Bill moaned. "I suppose I deserve that," he said breathlessly. 

"I don't think either of us want to see what you deserve," Jim muttered darkly, unbuttoning Bill's fly with deliberate slowness, pushing the material out of the way and licking a long wet stripe down his hand. He slid it into the hole in the material, wrapped around Bill's cock. He pumped him several times, drawing him out and fisting both of their cocks at the same time. The angle wasn't perfect, but they were both long practiced at having sex in imperfect circumstances. After all, there was a war on.

He ran a finger through the culminated precome on the head of Bill's cock and lifted it to his mouth. The bitter taste was familiar, one he'd been dreaming of since Oxford, since Bill had turned his whole world upside down. He stood, and pushed off his trousers altogether. He left them balled in a chair and padded over to Bill. No matter whatever else happened between them, the way Bill looked at his body – had always looked at his body – was enough to make up for everything. 

"Well?" Bill asked, impatient fingers reaching for Jim's hips, to guide him down.

He climbed onto Bill, slicking himself and Bill's cock. He took several deep breaths as he took Bill into himself. It _had_ been awhile, and there was no one other than Bill, not for him. Not that he'd ever tell Bill that. Not that he'd have to.

There was the usual flush of discomfort, the ache and stretch that he hoped he would feel later, sitting in the dull wooden chair of his fake export business and thinking of Bill, thinking of this. This encounter would have to sustain him for months.

Bill moaned behind him, his fingers digging hard into Jim's flesh, and he knew there would be bruises. Bill always left bruises. Intentionally, Jim knew, though exactly why he hadn't been able to figure out yet. He knew what he wanted to think, but he also knew that Bill wasn't like him; that his reasons were always layered and complex, equations of vast improbability with more variables than Jim could count.

He bit off his own cry as he came, his hands locking over Bill's wrists, leaving his own marks as best he could. That was against everything they were taught before going into the field, but Jim never cared about that, not while they were together.

When Bill came inside him he could feel it, deep and pulsing, as Bill's body continued to thrust up. Bill's cry was not choked off, and Jim liked hearing it, needed to hear it, remember it. 

*

When Bill left it was still raining. Jim leaned back on the sofa, listening to the soft sound of water on the roof and touching the tender places that Bill had left behind. The bruises would last for three days, maybe four, and then he'd have nothing to remember the encounter by except his memories and Bill's vague promises of another meeting. Jim never trusted those promises. Bill Haydon had always gotten whatever things he wanted, and Jim been waiting for the day he would stop being one of them. It was only a matter of time.


End file.
